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The Great Poets
- John Keats
- Narrated by: Samuel West, Michael Sheen
- Length: 1 hr and 7 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Naxos AudioBooks continues its new series of Great Poets, represented by collections of their most popular poems in one program. Although John Keats had a short life, he produced a series of outstanding poems, many of which appeared first in letters to his sister. He was largely unappreciated during his lifetime and died in Rome at the age of 26. Most of his 150 poems were written in just nine extraordinary months in 1819. This selection contains some of his finest works, including the principal "Odes", "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", "Old Meg", and "Much Have I Travelled".
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What listeners say about The Great Poets
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- C. Cobb
- 08-25-08
Here is the list of poems in this collection
Below from Naxos Audiobooks is the list of poems on this audiobook:
Great Spirits now on Earth are sojourning
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold
On the sea
Wherein lies happiness?
On Sitting Down to read King Lear once Again
Bright Star! Would I were steadfast as thou
Old Meg she was a Gipsy
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
A casement high and triple-arched there was
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on Melancholy
Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Ode on a Grecian Urn
To Sleep
Ode to Psyche
A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone
To Autumn
This living hand, now warm and capable
When I have fears that I may cease to be
From Endymion
Fancy
There was a naughty boy
The Eve of St Agnes
55 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Noiresque
- 10-20-09
Michael Sheen
One of my favourite narrators reads one of my favourite poets. I bought this because of the emotionally lucid Michael Sheen, and Samuel West is no less excellent.
15 people found this helpful
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- ESK
- 07-29-12
Music to my ears
Sensual and sweet-sounding. A brilliant selection of poems and odes of one of the most celebrated Romantic poets. The narrators' performance was laudable.
8 people found this helpful
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- cynthia
- 10-01-12
It sounds like John Keats thinking...
Where does The Great Poets rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Way up there
What did you like best about this story?
"Why did I laugh tonight?"
What does Samuel West and Michael Sheen bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Compelling evidence of the centrality of prosopopoeia to the reception of the lyric.
= They read with expression, conveying thoughts and feelings plausibly associated with the words of the poems.
If you liked the movie "Bright Star," you'll like this.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The change of voice -- and reader?--in order to render "Ode on Melancholy" properly. Its language is very artificial and this was done histrionically and well.
Any additional comments?
Sir Ralph Richardson' s reading aloud of Keats poems is fascinatingly different but also very pleasing.
4 people found this helpful
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Overall

- Kristina
- 10-29-12
Nice readings but lacks titles and spaces
A good selection of Keats's poems and the readings are really nice - much better than the heavily mannered ones of some famous actors. I would give it 5 stars if it were not for that fact that many of the readings have no title or introduction and the gaps between some of them are too short. So if you are not a Keats expert, you have no idea what you are listening to, or where one poem stops and the next one begins, or whether it is a complete poem or an excerpt. OK, so some of them don't have titles. Why then can't they say something like "Sonnet fifteen from Literary remains". Or "Excerpt from Lamia Book 2 lines122-149" The two readers sound similar so if they alternate it doesn't help either. Shoddily put together, I would say, and a real shame.
10 people found this helpful
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- Kelvin
- 07-29-19
Ace
Brilliant loved every minute. The narrators were incredible and made me feel Keats words.Great value